Unofficial news and tips about Google

September 28, 2011

Google Reader, Replaced by Google Sites in the Navigation Bar

Google Reader users probably noticed that the feed reader has been replaced by Google Sites in the main navigation bar. To visit Google Reader, they need to click "More" and then click "Reader" in the list of Google services.

Unlike the last time when Reader was replaced by Google Sites, this time is not an accident. A Google employee explained that this is a permanent change.

While the link to Reader has moved, you can continue to access Google Reader under the "More" dropdown. Or, you can also set a specific bookmark to reader.google.com for one-click access. Depending your browser, try dragging http://reader.google.com right from this post onto the bookmark bar on your browser (usually below the URL bar).

Google has usually made changes in the navigation based on the popularity of the services and it's likely that Reader's popularity is declining, while Google Sites gains more users. According to Google Trends, the queries [google reader] and [google sites] have almost the same search volume in the US.

Like Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader doesn't have a new interface based on Google+. The latest features added to Google Reader were comment moderation and integration with Google Buzz, a service that will soon disappear.

77 comments:

I use it a lot. It would really be horrible to see it disappear.I don't care if they don't add new features (except G+ integration?), but it should stay online because it's a great and very useful service.

But I'm not sure people doing searches "google site" are looking for 'google site' per se but rather the site of google, so the trends has not a real sense; but I guess Googlers know more about me about that :)

Beside search, Reader is Google's most useful service for me. It might be going down just because people don't know about its magic...Searchwiki is another dead google project which was damn useful but very few had a clue about its existence or the point of it. Lack of advertising ? Or simply mainstream adoption going down for RSS?

Read this post from Google Reader. Not pleased. Google Reader is the most useful, out of all Google's services, and it is the reason why I currently use all my different Google web apps today. Without Reader, I wouldn't have downloaded Chrome, I would have bought an iPhone instead of my Galaxy S, and I certainly wouldn't have hopped on the bandwagon for Google+. Keep Google Reader, the best web service ever.

Let me add my voice to the chorus of those begging for Google Reader to avoid being shut down. There's no other tool I know of that allows you to customize the way you read news and get it when you want it, how you want it. I don't want to read news through a Facebook or Google+ "stream" that gives me random links at random times of the day. Google Reader gives me headlines in chronological order, batched together so I can read everything from one source, then move on to the next. Far less scattered than trying to get news through social media. LEAVE GOOGLE READER ALONE!

Last time this happened and then Google put Reader back in clear view, there was much discussion (as now) and comment on the future of RSS feed readers in general.

I depend on my RSS feeds and use Google Reader heavily. I may be imagining things, but lately I've noticed RSS feed links listed more prominently on a variety of web sites, so perhaps RSS is on the rise. We may yet see Google reinstate Reader to a visible slot on the bar. I hope so.

I love Google Reader and use it all day everyday to keep up with the 100s of blogs I follow. The interface is clean, easy and dead simple to use. Keyboard shortcuts are awesome! I really hope it isn't cut, there's no google, simple replacement out there at all.

Google Trends is a bad way to measure popularity. We in the Linux community are aware that searches for Linux and Ubuntu are declining, but the number of users is at an all time high. More than likely, most people just know what Linux is now, compared to 2004, so they're not searching for it.

Likewise, Google Reader searches may be declining because everyone interested in an RSS reader knows what it is and where to find it.

Of course, Google has the access logs and knows exactly how many people are using these services, and probably based their decision on that.

Let's hope this means that Reader, or an improved derivative, is coming to Google+. Otherwise my user experience has diminished slightly (I just +1'd this publicly with the same comment: https://plus.google.com/107000089930454732856/posts/R6QT4HzJ7B9).

Of course, that makes me wonder whether or not Google could just integrate +1 comments with individual site comments, negating the need for me to double comment as I just did.

This sucks, I never use Sites, never use Groups, barely use Photos, but use Reader multiple times a day. This is Google, you should know what I want, let me customize it myself, or better yet you're probably already tracking what I use, make it bubble up based on which services I visit the most!

there's no alternative good enough for google reader, why don't they just keep both of them? or at least make users choose which one to keep?or maybe use the most used one by each user? i use google reader probably even more than gmail itself.the most important google services for me are google search, image search, gmail, google reader,blogger,adsense.and i don't really find a lot of google sites in the search results, not as much as blogger.why don't they just keep it? do they have to follow the lead of mozilla by removing the good features? anyway, i already have it in my bookmarks toolbar

I'm NOT interested in using G+, so integrating Reader into G+ (as other commenters here have suggested) would likely be the same as killing it to me.

When Bloglines was about to shut down, there were waves of comments and guides to help Bloglines users migrate to Reader. Where will everyone go if Reader gets shut down like so many other google services have lately?

I use it a lot.It would really be horrible to see it disappear.I don't care if they don't add new features (except G+ integration?), but it should stay online because it's a great and very useful service.

Google sites is one of the worst services. Google search engines do not have any weightage for these pages. All the efforts put up on Google sites would be waste. Saying this with a lot of experience. Wordpress is much much better than google sites.

Bummer. I have no need for 'Sites', so an app I use daily has been replaced with one I'll probably never use. I agree with the previous comments that it would be nice if the navigation bar was configurable so that you could "pin" certain links. Also, oddly, the address bar in Google+ still has the link to Reader instead of Sites.